Is it real?
I read all over the forums people’s comments that their taste changes completely after the surgery. It seemed so unreal to me that I didn’t believe it much. Well, the thing is very real! It happened to me.
I didn’t notice this at the very beginning. Obviously, I was barely eating and I couldn’t get in anything but broth and Aquarius. There is very little where you could notice any change whatsoever.
Sugar
The first thing that tasted strange was yogurts. When I was finally able to stomach them, and it took me about 3 months, I really liked plain white ones. No sweetener, no sugar, no fruit, nothing. Simple plain yogurt tasted to me sweet. It was weird.
Now I get it, I stayed away from sugar so much time that my taste buds had time to readjust to the factory setting and started to appreciate the taste as it really it. We are eating so much added sugar that we consider it normal and our taste is literally hijacked and is not objective.
Textures and flavors
But it was not only sweet things. After surviving so much time on cottage cheese and scrambled eggs, everything I tried again tasted like heaven. I really appreciated all the textures and flavors, it was all as if I was a toddler and I was trying different foods for the first time.
I see often people asking what they should buy in advance before the surgery. I would say here: nothing at all, you have no idea now how things will taste to you after, and what you love now, easily you might hate later. As dramatic as the change is.
Change of the chip
I think I helped this process quite a bit by realizing that I will have to start eating very differently and that there will be things on my plate that I have never tasted before. What is more, they will become my new normal.
Food aversion
What is more, it took me over a year to get over a huge aversion towards any food. Everything smelled to me weird, incredibly strong, and disgusting and I didn’t feel like eating anything. Sometimes it made me even more nauseous. The worst one was meat. I couldn’t stand the smell while cooking it. That was something. Most likely it was linked to the fact that I developed intolerance to it, so my body was telling me to stay away from it.
Ex-favorite meals
And something similar happened to some of my ex-favorite meals. They never tasted the same. When I was able to eat something like normal food, I tried some of the things I used to like but it was not the same. Something was off. It smelled funny, the texture was weird, the taste was meh. It was a very surprising experience.
Unexpected cravings
What I never expected from myself was that I would be craving things that were almost on the list of things I never liked much. Would you believe that you can crave things like bell peppers or cucumbers? And you want this instead of chips. Really! It is crunchy, it is juicy, it smells so nice and it is refreshing. No, I am not crazy. This is one of the bari-wonders as I call it.
Would you believe that when I am planning my weekly meals and I think about what I could have, I think about things like meat and veggies mostly? Sometimes a little rice here or a tortilla there, but that’s it. My carb cravings are completely gone. I used to eat tons of them but now I barely remember to think about them.
Ridiculous tastes
And sweet things, they are completely ridiculous to me. I don’t have any cookies, cakes, chocolates, anything resembling these at home. Oh, yes, there is one 99% dark chocolate, but I will have to check it if it hasn’t gone bad already (the heat here is a killer). I don’t want it. I do not buy it, I don’t have it at home, and when I go out to celebrate something, I usually have some fruit instead of these overly sweet things.
I think there is a bag of potato chips that are left after some celebration I had at home, but as we didn’t open it, so it stayed on the shelf up there. Under normal circumstances, I would breathe it in the afternoon after the party, but now it has been there maybe three months and it is collecting dust. This is what bariatric surgery did to me.
I might be the odd one
Maybe I am an exception and I am taking things overly well, but it is really like this for me. But it seems to me that maybe I am the black sheep because in the forums I see people commenting that they crave fast food and chips and cookies and cakes and muffins, you name it. Everything that is a huge exception and not advisable to eat for us now.
I have a personal theory about it: after the surgery, I never started eating all those things stated above. I never started to eat a lot of bread, I have a piece of cake maybe twice a year on very special occasions, and I had rice maybe two months ago. It is all weird to me. I don’t feel well after eating that. So I eat it very occasionally. And I don’t buy it either. So if I don’t have it at home, I do not see it all the time and I don’t “want” it.
You can’t see it, you don’t want it. You forget about it. Easy as that.
Surgery is not a miracle!
Bariatric surgery definitely doesn’t work the way that it erases all your thoughts about food. At all. Well, sometimes I am laughing at myself thinking that they didn’t operate on my stomach but did me a lobotomy 😀 This is the level of change that I personally perceive. But I have to admit that I was working really hard on my food demons in advance and it seems to me now that it was the time best spent.
No surgery, no pills, no injections, nothing will help you and sort out the problem you have around food. We got to the weight we had/have for a reason and if we don’t sort out the key underlying source of our excess weight, nothing will help us. They can cut us in half and we still will be eating fast food and keep overeating ourselves. The thing is, you have to figure out why you are doing that.
What to do
This is the only way how to save yourself. Identify the real underlying problem and start doing something about it. The food and consequently the weight are only a symptom. I am so glad that I got this before because now my life is much easier. Obviously, I have some problems, I would be lying if I were denying it, but I don’t have to fight things that I had solved before. This is crucial.
It is a tool
I had to make a lot of changes, and adjustments, build new habits, and change my routines. I literally turned my life around and bent myself backward. But I did it. And it is working. The surgery is a great tool. But it is only a tool. It is you who has to use it. If you don’t use it, it won’t work.
Be aware of this. Because this is the way how to gain the war you have with food. It is not a single battle. You are at war forever. But you are getting to the battlefield well-equipped and you have great strategies. How you will use it all, is only up to you. And so is the outcome. Good luck!
Do you agree with me?
